I agree. But I would also hope that as a riot police officer, you would have received training in how to handle such situations so that you weren't on edge and be able to do your job in a controlled and level handed manner. Given that all the police waded in together, my guess is that they were given an order to charge and let hell loose. Good job that never happens in this country!

Police firing either tear gas or rubber bullets into a metro station, pouring down escalators onto platforms causing panic (by metro lines - are they . WTF?) Crowds dragging down loan police men and kicking them on the ground. Small groups of police getting hit with furniture from larger groups of rioters. Shop keepers seeming to try and protect their customers from police and rioters. Police hitting people coming out of shops. Police battoning people standing still in the metro etc.

> (In reply to nickyrannoch)
>
> [...]
>
> I agree. But I would also hope that as a riot police officer, you would have received training in how to handle such situations so that you weren't on edge and be able to do your job in a controlled and level handed manner.

As a younger man I used to go to various anti-war, anti capitalist, anti G8 protests around europe.

i have been around some disgusting stuff from the authorities including the police's attempted murder of Martin Shaw in Geneva.

However, every knows its all a bit of a game, the riot police get pumped up for confrontation and the anarchists ( i was one) get pumped up too, confronting the police, daring them to kick off ( after all they are professionals, paid to be there, well trained so isn't a fun little game to see how far we can go until they snap).

i can't get worked up over this video, two gangs of daft young lads engaging in some posturing and a bit of a ruckus.

If those little twits in the black bloc and on the far Left ( i was one) would actually think to enage with the authorites who are working class men affected by austerity as much as anyone, instead of the posturing we might get somewhere one day.

> If those little twits in the black bloc and on the far Left ( i was one) would actually think to enage with the authorites who are working class men affected by austerity as much as anyone, instead of the posturing we might get somewhere one day.

Agreed completely until the last para... I don't see how the police can be so heavy-handed on all the student demos (I was at all of them), and the anti-cuts demos in London (I was also at most of them, including 26th March), yet have the temerity & hypocrisy to complain & have a demo of their own when they get cut too. All in it together? Nah.

What are you proposing? For the demonstrators and riot police to sit over a cup of tea and agree to demonstrate in front of the Parliament together?

Sure, the idiots that were up front where trying to get the shit to hit the fan, but all the other people you see being trodden and beaten by those who are paid to protect them were only there because they are loosing their homes and going hungry so their children can have a meal. And that's not some sort of idealistic revolutionary statement. I have friends and family down there and i can assure you that the situation is even worse than the news report let out.

Second vid is interesting though I can't read the Spanish. First bit is the same as the first vid but from the ground and it interesting how much more hectic it appears from there.

In both videos it looks like the cops are vastly outnumbered though admittedly you can't always tell from partial bits of footage. From what I've seen in this country the police don't usually lash out in such a fashion unless they've clearly got the upper hand for obvious reasons. Perhaps it's austerity policing?

The attack in the first video looks like something preceded it, probably the reason the woman is trying to calm things down to start with.

> However, every knows its all a bit of a game, the riot police get pumped up for confrontation and the anarchists ( i was one) get pumped up too, confronting the police, daring them to kick off ( after all they are professionals, paid to be there, well trained so isn't a fun little game to see how far we can go until they snap).

Interesting and very different to my recollection of such events. Usually there was some coordinated task of the day like trying to shut down a conference, occupy a building, set up a soundsystem or whatever and the police's job was to try to stop it happening. It was usually here that tensions arose though quite often, at least in the UK, the cops took a more softly softly approach that things with little trouble. Of course the authorities had to accept that something like a road would be blocked for an afternoon.

> If those little twits in the black bloc and on the far Left ( i was one) would actually think to enage with the authorites who are working class men affected by austerity as much as anyone, instead of the posturing we might get somewhere one day.

Hmmm, nice idea though naively idealistic in my opinion. It would be very hard to engage with police firstly because where/when would you ever get the chance?

Secondly they're doing a job, they're paid to follow orders from higher up so they're not free to think and decide things for themselves anyway. Individual police can and do sometimes have sympathy with protestors but at the end of the day it's their job to stop them.

Thirdly I think the police have they're own culture so it would difficult/impossible to make any headway there. I think it really comes down to different class interests. The police might technically be working class as you say yet their whole raison'd'etre is carrying out Government policy which in this day an age largely amounts to protecting the interests of the business class. And besides it's not uncommon for working class people to have very conservative values hence the reason the Sun is so popular.

In reply to stp:
I wonder if some deep seated animal behavior patterns our happening, not some protest about money, or rather the lack of it. In the first clip look at 2.56, it appears in the second clip from a ground angle. As soon as the officer is knocked down by a flying kick on his blind side other protesters attack, the more time he is on the ground, the more attackers. The interesting part is other officers are left alone, a line of four appear in one shot (second clip) yet they are not attacked. Only the downed officer. Wolf pack mentality?

Then in the first clip you can hear the verbal wind up, the body movement become shorter and sharper, then the police charge in response to the flag / lance / stick battering.

Its almost like two animals going through a ritual dance that proceeds real conflict. I had to deal with a lad with mental health issues (paranoia, persecution complex), on my own late at night in a small confined space. He went through the same process, winding himself up for the attack, but he wouldn't until his friends arrived and held him back, then he tried to attack. Which was interesting as I had left by that point!!!

So could the police have applied so kind of deescalation tactic or are they so caught up in the 'dance' they keep on escalating it?

Just for the record though, on balance I do feel the police are being pushed into a fight. Is the fighting (ie the rioters) about some need for conflict and nothing to do with a legitimate protest?

Total respect for the women who trys to tell them to back off and the man who uses himself as a human door to protect what I assume are customers or scared bystanders. Maybe if more people stood up the hooded 'protestors' the real point could be made?

Is it not beyond the realms of possibility that when faced with armored up and baton wielding thugs in black, protesters might get wound up to fight? And if it was your friend being singled out and dragged away at 2:55 perhaps you'd want to get stuck in - the police are happy to smash people with batons, no different to a flying kick.

> (In reply to Simon Wells)
>
> Is it not beyond the realms of possibility that when faced with armored up and baton wielding thugs in black, protesters might get wound up to fight? And if it was your friend being singled out and dragged away at 2:55 perhaps you'd want to get stuck in - the police are happy to smash people with batons, no different to a flying kick.

You've been on these forums since the year dot - I thought that 10 years down the line you might have grown up ;-)

> (In reply to Simon Wells)
>
> Is it not beyond the realms of possibility that when faced with armored up and baton wielding thugs in black, protesters might get wound up to fight?

Lucky they found those home made riot shields before they got all wound up. What a coincidence that it was the small group of masked black wearing youths with black and red flags that got all wound up at the same time.

And if it was your friend being singled out and dragged away at 2:55 perhaps you'd want to get stuck in - the police are happy to smash people with batons, no different to a flying kick.

Poor old chap must have had a lot of friends from all over the crowd as people came running in from all different angles to try and rescue him. I'd be glad to have friends that could recognise me from a different part of the crowd at a distance, in the dark, in a riot when I was masked and hooded in black.

Do you think that charging a working underground platform could ever be a good idea? Where are scared people going to go beyond onto the tracks? Did you see the screaming guy in the wheelchair? Or firing into the atrium of metro station? After the bombings of the train stations in Madrid, you could forgive any commuters making their way through the station utterly panicking as a result - it happened in Atocha station, where most people died in the 2004 bombings. At a distance, and shit scared, who's going to think "oh look, there's a masked man firing a pump-action shotgun into this building I'm sure is a police officer using rubber bullets and following standard operating procedures"?

Interesting points and I'm sure you can see such conflicts in a myriad of different ways. My experience in protests is that there are thousands of people involved and not everyone is there for the exact same reason, though the vast majority are. I think it's the same on both sides to some degree. There certainly exist police who just want to fight and I think that's probably true of some protesters too - though I think they're also understand the politics behind the protest. In Spain there are even agent provocteurs that have been caught on film in recent protests.

> then the police charge in response to the flag / lance / stick battering.

I'm not convinced that's the reason for the police charge. I think if it's a response to something then it's probably something that happened shortly before the film started. They're already grouped up behind the police line before the flag thing.

> Maybe if more people stood up the hooded 'protestors' the real point could be made?

It's not clear or agreed what the best thing to do in such situations is. Is standing your ground not a better way make a point than running away?

> Poor old chap must have had a lot of friends from all over the crowd as people came running in from all different angles to try and rescue him. I'd be glad to have friends that could recognise me from a different part of the crowd at a distance, in the dark, in a riot when I was masked and hooded in black.

They may or may not have been his friend but perhaps 'solidarity' might be a better way to think about that. I'm sure the same is true on both sides too. If a police officer was being attacked other officers would try to counter attack whether the officer was a friend or not.

But no, I was pretty gobsmacked at the entry to the train station. The only thing I can think of is they were going in to arrest specific offenders and it didn't look like that.
I can't understand what exactly they were trying to do and the possibilities of totally innocent people being seriously hurt was as dangerous as you describe.

> Poor old chap must have had a lot of friends from all over the crowd as people came running in from all different angles to try and rescue him. I'd be glad to have friends that could recognise me from a different part of the crowd at a distance, in the dark, in a riot when I was masked and hooded in black.

Interesting though, you being a police officer and all that, it seem you find strange the idea of people stepping in to help a defenceless girl who is being beaten up in the street.

> (In reply to off-duty)
> [...]
>
> [...]
>
> Interesting though, you being a police officer and all that, it seem you find strange the idea of people stepping in to help a defenceless girl who is being beaten up in the street.
>

I have no idea if it was a boy or a girl. I have no idea if they were "defenceless". They did appear to be hooded and clothed in black similar to the anarchists involved in the initial trouble. I don't believe that being a girl means that you must therefore not be involved in any disorder.

I certainly didn't see them getting beaten up - though that's not to say they necessarily weren't.
I am not entirely sure that I would describe running across and giving someone a flying kick and then another kick to the head as "stepping in to help" but I take your point.

My (sarcastic) post was in response to the suggestion that the person kicking has a personal relationship/attachment with the black hooded figure that the cops appear to be dragging away.

Umm. He's not black clad? He's being dragged away? Can 67 year old men not be involved in protests that mean they might end up getting dragged away?
I don't know what comment you really want - all I can see is a man getting dragged at the side of the road.
Do you know what happened before? Or afterwards?

> (In reply to nickyrannoch)
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> [...]
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> I don't see how the police can be so heavy-handed on all the student demos , yet have the temerity & hypocrisy to complain & have a demo of their own when they get cut too.

I didn't see them storming Millbank and throwing fire extinguishers off the top though.

> (In reply to TryfAndy)
> [...]
>
> I didn't see them storming Millbank and throwing fire extinguishers off the top though.

Just one fire extinguisher, and as it came within 2ft of me when it landed, I wasn't best pleased with that!
I did speak to a copper at Millbank who said he agreed completely with the protesters and that his kids were equally as worried about the fees, as were a lot of his colleagues; why try and stop them then?!

The only real violence I saw at the student demos, and I'm talking about violence against people, not just window-smashing, was when the kids were kettled & wanted to be let out. If they'd have been allowed to march, then they wouldn't have kicked off.

> Not entirely convinced that the first article is exactly what I would describe as balanced.

Did you look at the youtube footage linked from the article? Clubbing people sitting on the ground offering no resistance - like the "campus police" at Berkley earlier this year, pepper spraying all the students sitting down peacefully protesting - the cops know they are being filmed, so they must know that nothing will happen to them for using that sort of violence.

I also suspect in the Spanish case there are considerable tension that us outsiders don't understand. I'm not quite sure how it works there, but many European police in the gendarmerie tradition are paramilitary in tradition. A very different style of policing to the UK, and of course in Spain its only one generation back that the police were the force of the dictator. I remember watching on John Craven's Newsround the civil guards storm the parliament in the coup attempt!

> Interesting to know about the Finns.

The Finnish police are odd - they are the second most respected institution in the country after the military, but ask a young black Finn for their experience of the police and it can be shocking. I have a mate who used to be a bobby in Essex and ended up doing his education through the police up to PhD - he's now a sociologist here. He's done some studies of the police here and had some bizarre experiences, including being told by one policeman he was doing a 'ride along' with: "so you used to be a policeman? OK, good. If I get knocked down - you should take my gun"! My wife sometime has police accompany her for her job, and some have been shockingly unprofessional considering they are there to protect the social workers; for instance opening the door to a flat that no one knows whether it is occupied by the 'person of concern' or not, then standing outside saying 'give me a shout if you need me'. They're the ones with the stab vest on after all.

> I did speak to a copper at Millbank who said he agreed completely with the protesters and that his kids were equally as worried about the fees, as were a lot of his colleagues; why try and stop them then?!

Because the police don't get to choose what they do and don't enforce. This can't be a serious comment?

i'd love to hear some praise for the 99% of the time that the police help our communities and put their arses on the line to generally make our safer, not the 1% of the time they get things wrong...but hey I get that wouldn't fit with some peoples world view would it?

Well they are hypocrites then; they can't expect sympathy now they are getting affected by the gov't cuts when they showed none to anybody else, because they were 'just following orders' (where have I heard that excuse before...)

In reply to TryfAndy: No they are not hypocrites, they can agree with something personally and still carry out their professional duty. I don't think they expect sympathy but as any effective union would, their union is trying to protect their interests.

I for one wouldn't do something I disagreed with just because it's my job. Sod that, once that happens morals go out the window & you become a slave to the wage. Ironically enough, one of the things the aforementioned folks in black are against...

> (In reply to TryfAndy)
>
> I wasn't policing Milbank. Do you support me?

Of course, I think it's disgusting what's happening to rank & file coppers (I've met a couple I quite like), the same way it's wrong doing it to the army, NHS, teachers & everyone else being done over by the Tories to protect their mates in the City. And don't even get me started on the G4S (aka Grateful 4 Soldiers) being brought in as 'support staff' on investigations etc.

I was making the point that I don't understand at all how someone can do something they don't agree with at all just because they were told to; that kind of 'I was only following orders' attitude tends to lead to rather bad situations (however, if you were one of those on horseback in Parliament Square who nearly killed me, then no sympathy at all :p )

> (In reply to TryfAndy)
>
> Fair enough.
>
> As for the "only following orders" I think the view on causes, blame and actions from different sides of the "line" in a demonstration that turns into public disorder will be radically different.

No doubt about that, both sides are there for different reasons completely, and I doubt they'd ever see eye to eye.

From what I've seen, kettling doesn't help at all; being stuck there & not being let out for no reason other than being on the march isn't going to endear you to those holding you captive. I'm not completely condoning the behaviour that ensues in order to get out of said kettle, but it is pretty much inevitable.

> (In reply to off-duty)
> [...]
>
> No doubt about that, both sides are there for different reasons completely, and I doubt they'd ever see eye to eye.
>

Not sure about that, I've policed a few demos that have passed peacefully. Apart obviously from being called an uneducated bigot fairly routinely. Typically from students who haven't yet graduated. Which is ironic.

> (In reply to off-duty)
>
> [...]
>
> Did you look at the youtube footage linked from the article? Clubbing people sitting on the ground offering no resistance - like the "campus police" at Berkley earlier this year, pepper spraying all the students sitting down peacefully protesting - the cops know they are being filmed, so they must know that nothing will happen to them for using that sort of violence.
>

The article was about the Mossos - the Barcelona police force, which are well known for being brutal. There's a current case of 2 Mossos in court for throwing a stun grenade into a car they had stopped (they suspected it was being driven by two people running a protection racket). The grenade went off in the lap of one of the passengers and blew his nuts off leaving him sterile.

The video was of the Madrid police - they are different from the Civil Guard (which are the ones with the paramilitary background).

In the video one of the things they were saying in the subtitles and the interviews was that the police chased protesters into the station but then became confused about who was a protester and who was just waiting for a train. By the way, it was a train station, not the underground. The underground would have been even more dangerous because there is a third rail.

I'm in two minds about all this in the case of Spain. The police in the videos do seem to be overly aggressive; on the other hand there was a lot of provocation from the crowd, which is sad. I have so far been really impressed in Spain about how little violence there has been. This is a country where unemployment is 25%. For under 25's, it is closer to 50% and has been that high for a few years now. The government is cutting jobs and salaries and people have been admirably peaceful in their protest so far. There's also a lot of frustration against the political system. There has - for at least the past 10 years - been a steady stream of stories of corruption.

I think people are just reaching the end of their patience. I mentioned the situation to a taxi driver a week or two ago and he became visibly angry about the government cuts. I was also chatting to a barman the other day and saying how surprised I was that people weren't out on the streets and he said, "You wait for 25 Sept, then you'll see" so I think there has been a feeling for a while that it was going to come to a head.

What happened before was austerity imposed on him by an unelected supra-national group of 8 people based in Frankfurt, and what happened afterwards is that, just like Greece and Italy before them, that man will not be allowed to vote for his political leaders, they will be installed for him and kept there by force.

That's what it boils down to, having attended a few Madrid demonstrations myself.

'anarchists' roughly translates to 'people who are getting more and more desperate so the state(unelected) labels them anarchists'.

I'd think revolutionaries would be a fairer word, because when the 'anarchists' start getting really hungry, thats what they will become.

> (In reply to gcandlin)
>
> I for one wouldn't do something I disagreed with just because it's my job. Sod that, once that happens morals go out the window & you become a slave to the wage.

That's a bit of a cop-out. I presume most coppers joined the police to arrest burglars, rapists, murderers etc. Because 1% of the job involves wasting their time kettling students they should jack it in?

Mrs Ridge is a nurse. At the last job a lot of the intake was from Wakefield nick. Murderers, kiddie fiddlers etc. Deeply nasty people, and she hated treating them. The world woyld have been a far better place if they'd been left to bleed out.

How about the legal profession? Should they quit the job because it involves defending criminals?

Channel 4 News just had the protests from Spain on, showing the rozzers beating & arresting people with a V/O talking about how they too are being affected the same as everyone else who is protesting, but still have to do their jobs. They are just fools in that situation, being used by the state whilst they are still useful then chucked on the scrapheap alongside those they previously battered.
No, of course they shouldn't quit their job, but if they truly gave a toss, they'd stand aside & let the protesters get on with it.

I've refused to do tasks I was given in previous jobs because I didn't agree with them from an ethical viewpoint. Yes, it got me in the shit, but I held firm and at least I had my morals intact, which is much more important to me than anything else.

I've refused to do tasks I was given in previous jobs because I didn't agree with them from an ethical viewpoint. Yes, it got me in the shit, but I held firm and at least I had my morals intact, which is much more important to me than anything else.

As long as they're not given illegal orders to carry out, the Police as individuals and as a whole have to carry out orders as given them by their superiors. If they find that ethos is not to their liking, they can find another job.

Same excuse as many of the Nazis, just following orders. They are just too stupid to see that their blind obedience is going to contribute to their own downfall once their use has expired by their political masters.

> As long as they're not given illegal orders to carry out, the Police as individuals and as a whole have to carry out orders as given them by their superiors. If they find that ethos is not to their liking, they can find another job.

Yes and I'm sure some do but probably most people of certain political leanings know that and won't ever join up in the first place. Which makes a police a political force contradicting the claims often made that they are politically neutral.

Yes and I'm sure some do but probably most people of certain political leanings know that and won't ever join up in the first place. Which makes a police a political force contradicting the claims often made that they are politically neutral.

It works all ways though i.e. the Police (Armed Forces as well) will preclude all extremists, whether they be political, religious or animal rights etc.

> (In reply to stp)
>
> Same excuse as many of the Nazis, just following orders. They are just too stupid to see that their blind obedience is going to contribute to their own downfall once their use has expired by their political masters.

I say again the view can be very different from different sides of the line.
Your romantic idealistic struggle against the state and it's armed bully boys the police, is seen from my side as a bunch of idiots smashing things up, running riot and trying to batter me and my colleagues.

Personally I'd rather protests weren't violent. Hell, I'd rather we didn't have to work them at all. I've worked a fair few that are peaceful and one or two that are violent. I certainly haven't done anything different.

I guess for every Nazi blindly following orders, we have a militant anarchist fighting for the rights of the working class, whether the working class know about it or not.

> (In reply to MJ)
>
> [...]
>
>
> Yes and I'm sure some do but probably most people of certain political leanings know that and won't ever join up in the first place. Which makes a police a political force contradicting the claims often made that they are politically neutral.

The police are politically complex. You will find every flavour of voter amongst us.
There may be general themes of agreement in relation to crime, punishment and social responsibility but there are a lot of variations within that.

There are probably as many (though not the same) disparate viewpoints amongst us as you find marching under the same banner in a Unite against Fascism march (though probably a higher level of employment ;-)

> (In reply to Ken Lewis)
>
> Thanks for that. I guess I was asking for something a little less macroscopic

Macroscopic, I'm not well versed in Spanish law, so I'll pretend it happened here.

Perhaps he said something, or held a placard, that triggered the word 'likely', conveniently placed in the section 5 legislation to cover any possible base, allowing for the (unelected)state sponsered thought crime officers to drag him along the street.

We will never know.

The people demonstrating in Madrid aren't mindless tw*ts tagging on the back of a demonstration in Tottenham as an excuse to go shoplifting and commit some arson. They are desperate people.

And I dont see what the colour of someones dress or general atire has to do with anything, one should never stereotype. Weren't you taught that?

Anyway, you seem most definately on-duty for the course of this discussion. I hope you can take your uniform off and see it from the point of view of the 25%/6 million people being screwed over through no fault of their own, and then given a state sponsered kicking for their troubles.

> (In reply to off-duty)
> [...]
>
> Macroscopic, I'm not well versed in Spanish law, so I'll pretend it happened here.
>
> Perhaps he said something, or held a placard, that triggered the word 'likely', conveniently placed in the section 5 legislation to cover any possible base, allowing for the (unelected)state sponsered thought crime officers to drag him along the street.
>
> We will never know.
>
> The people demonstrating in Madrid aren't mindless tw*ts tagging on the back of a demonstration in Tottenham as an excuse to go shoplifting and commit some arson. They are desperate people.
>
> And I dont see what the colour of someones dress or general atire has to do with anything, one should never stereotype. Weren't you taught that?
>
> Anyway, you seem most definately on-duty for the course of this discussion. I hope you can take your uniform off and see it from the point of view of the 25%/6 million people being screwed over through no fault of their own, and then given a state sponsered kicking for their troubles.

I haven't defended the actions of the police in this video.
I have suggested that the actions of one protestor in particular might have been a little excessive, and addressed what I saw as a slightly one-sided description of someone involved in some sort of fight with the police.

The reason for highlighting the black-clad nature of certain of those involved is that, in the video, a group of black clad individuals stood out from the rest of the crowd, both in their dress and their actions.

> The people demonstrating in Madrid aren't mindless tw*ts tagging on the back of a demonstration in Tottenham as an excuse to go shoplifting and commit some arson. They are desperate people.

You don't know that either. I imagine that 95% + of the crowd had very good reasons to protest, but anyone who has even a passing interest in political extremism in Europe will know that there are violent people within the antifa/black block movements, who want to confront the police. Whether that is in someway justifiable or not is another matter - but denying it is just silly.